Half Life 2 Stream - shelf life?

[Windfire]

I've purchased HL2 Silver. I've enjoyed the game a lot--great graphics, physics, etc, etc.. I'm not going to discuss how great the game is.

What I want to discuss is that regardless of whether you have CDs/DVDs, how do we know Valve will be here in 1 year (let alone 3+ years) for us to still play the game?

On occasion I go back and look at some of my fav's from the past. For example: Total Annihilation (1997) or even Half Life 1. I have the CDs and I simply re-install them and they work great.

What about Half Life 2? In 5-7 years will we be able to run what we've purchased???

I'm all for stopping piracy, but I think this has gone too far.

 

[Richard]

What about Half Life 2? In 5-7 years will we be able to run what we've purchased???

I'm all for stopping piracy, but I think this has gone too far.

If Valve goes under I fully expect them to release a final patch disabling the need for Steam. This problem isn't new. MMOGs are actually a lot worse because if the company disappears, you'll never find free servers powerful enough to run the realms, even if you do get a patch enabling the game to connect to "custom servers".

 

[DOGMA1138]

Valve isnt going any where if it dose ill kill myself :?
gotta find out WTF happend

 

[kopio0]

What about Half Life 2? In 5-7 years will we be able to run what we've purchased???

i'm sure they are betting that when that time arrived, you would have lost your files and password and you will probably repurchase it. ofcourse it will be price much cheaper by then.

 

[Himself]

What about Half Life 2? In 5-7 years will we be able to run what we've purchased???

What game do you own that is 7 years old that you still play today? Geez, I don't know many games that I returned to after a few months, let alone years.. lol

 

[Guden Oden]

Many people still play games like Total Annihilation, Quake 2, Unreal (though not quite 7 y/o yet I think), Duke 3D, or even the original Doom for that matter.

 

[Crusher]

Considering you can play the game today without connecting to the Steam servers, I don't think there's much concern for those who already own it. The problem would be the people who want to purchase the game after the company is gone and have no way of authenticating it.

 

[anaqer]

Considering you can play the game today without connecting to the Steam servers, I don't think there's much concern for those who already own it. The problem would be the people who want to purchase the game after the company is gone and have no way of authenticating it.

There's a big difference between "owning it" and "having an already authenticated copy of it on your hard drive"...

EDIT: then again, if the backup they let you make could be played at any time w/o Steam, it wouldn't be so much of a problem... somehow I don't think this is the case though, as surely such backup images would have been in circulation since day one instead of all those homebrewn ISOs...

 

[ZoinKs!]

What game do you own that is 7 years old that you still play today? Geez, I don't know many games that I returned to after a few months, let alone years.. lol

I've recently been playing Wing Commander. The first one, from 1990. Well, actually it's a version of The Kilrathi Saga (from Home of the Underdogs), a Windows compatible update of the original... those DirectX 2 graphics work fine on my modern system.

 

[RussSchultz]

What game do you own that is 7 years old that you still play today? Geez, I don't know many games that I returned to after a few months, let alone years.. lol

Civilization--over 12 years old. (of course, I typically play Civ3 now).

Quake3 is over 5 years old (I think).

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

There's a lot of people still playing Unreal Tournament, and you should have seen the outcry when Epic said they were going to switch off the master server to "encourage" people to upgrade to UT2K3/4.

Epic did relent, but there are lots of complaints as the UT master server now seems to suffer a lot of outages that take a long time to fix - much more than it used to.

 

[MrGaribaldi]

What game do you own that is 7 years old that you still play today? Geez, I don't know many games that I returned to after a few months, let alone years.. lol

I've recently been playing Wing Commander. The first one, from 1990. Well, actually it's a version of The Kilrathi Saga (from Home of the Underdogs), a Windows compatible update of the original... those DirectX 2 graphics work fine on my modern system.

Cool, guess I'll have to check it out!

Recently completed LSL3, The Lost Vikings and DOTT, are killing time with Cannon Fodder, started Duke3d (though need to figure out how to get sound) and usually spend a few hours with original Quake every now and again, and load up Quake: Team Fortress when I remember. (The list goes on, but I'll stop there)

Point being, I love returning to old games over and over, as they were quite fun to play. Hl2 looks to be added to that category, and thus it'd be preferable if I didn't have to hunt for a 7 year old crack when valve kicks the bucket...

And if you look at the people playing abandonware, you'll see that there are quite a few people who like vintage gaming

 

[anaqer]

started Duke3d (though need to figure out how to get sound)

TRYME!

 

[MrGaribaldi]

started Duke3d (though need to figure out how to get sound)

TRYME!

Sorry for the OT.

 

[Diplo]

or even the original Doom for that matter.

Yeah, I was suprised how many people still play Doom online. I was playing some jDoom co-op with a friend and ran my own server and didn't bother to password it as I didn't expect anyone else but my mate to find it. However, within minutes people started joining the server.

Also, what about mods? How many people still play orginal CS or other games that are based around the original Half Life?

 

[ZoinKs!]

Also, what about mods? How many people still play orginal CS or other games that are based around the original Half Life?

http://archive.gamespy.com/stats/

As I type this, 53,007 are playing HL 1 and it's mods. For some reason, CS: S isn't listed by GameSpy and numbers on Steam's status page are higher.

 

[LocutusX]

What about Half Life 2? In 5-7 years will we be able to run what we've purchased???

What game do you own that is 7 years old that you still play today? Geez, I don't know many games that I returned to after a few months, let alone years.. lol

A lot of gaming enthusiasts continue to play old games;

Sid Meier's Civilization
Star Control 2
Half-Life 1 (6 years)
X-Com 1 ("UFO")


That's just my personal list.

Oh and I believe more people are still playing the original CS than CSS... although this figure may gradually end up changing over the course of a few months.

 

[Crusher]

http://archive.gamespy.com/stats/

As I type this, 53,007 are playing HL 1 and it's mods. For some reason, CS: S isn't listed by GameSpy and numbers on Steam's status page are higher.

Yes, heaven forbid not everyone on the planet uses Gamespy.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I played Kings Bounty Recently. I had originally bought the game (floppies) but somewhere I lost it. I found it on the net somewhere though and decided to play it again.

Lots of fun for an old game (12 Years or older). HL1 came sout mid 1998 and Q3 came out end of 1998 (the final demo at least).

US

 

[Zod]

and Q3 came out end of 1998 (the final demo at least).

Nah, the first versions of Q3 Test didn't come out until Spring 1999.